I arrive early at The Art League’s classroom all ready to CREATE. No need to feel intimidated. Any four year old can do this stuff. In fact, the idea of wielding colors around reminds me of those free-flowing kindergarten days.

Unlike Miss Cotrell’s Kindergarten class, we should have received a supply list and brought items to class.

The other students got the memo. They arrive with so many tubes of paint and fancy art tools that they travel with specialized art tool chests on wheels.

I arrived with a pocket sized notebook and pencil.

After the introductory lecture about how to lay an expressionist base, the teacher sends me off to the store where I spend a couple hundred dollars on acrylics, brushes, canvases and a thing called Gesso, which I had read about but guess I’d been pronouncing incorrectly.

When I return to the class-in-progress, I see two different kinds of student art works:

#1 The Barfed On Canvas.

#2 The Canvas I Want To Buy.

After class, I approach a woman who has done a #2 type painting.

“I love your painting.”

Unmoved, she says something like thank you.

“Do you love your painting?” I ask this hoping she might say that I can have it.

“It’s a lot different from what I usually do.”

I would feel like a jerk saying “I’ll give you $100 for it,” so I don’t.

I regret it.

It happens she’s a graphic designer. I learn there are three graphic designers in the class, looking for their muses. There are also award-winning landscape painters, all taking the class to learn “letting go”.

Our first assignment is to be loose – out of control. Baby, I am the queen of no control. We begin with bold black strokes, applied randomly on large canvases. I call this The Preliminary Barfing Stage. It lays the base for the illness which will continue with dry heaves for another two hours of art class.

My painting is so bad that I leave it in the art school restroom where it belongs.

Later, an artist friend, Allen, counseled, “Make a list of everything you hate about your painting and then do the opposite.”

I give myself permission to sit quietly with a tiny piece of paper. I take a sip of water. I breathe Zen, I dip into gray and stroke one time with my brush. I let gravity have the second turn.

Do you remember the euphoria that comes after vomiting? The chills and fever are done. The stomach has calmed. The terrible illness has finally passed.

With the proper lighting and frame the Hirshorn will have a line and timed ticket entries for Zen Plop Collection. Don’t you think so?

]]>https://thesacredordinary.com/2017/03/04/i-could-paint-that/feed/3my-zen-plop-picturedianeheathAll went to be taxed, every one into his own city.https://thesacredordinary.com/2016/04/15/all-went-to-be-taxed-every-one-into-his-own-city/
https://thesacredordinary.com/2016/04/15/all-went-to-be-taxed-every-one-into-his-own-city/#commentsFri, 15 Apr 2016 15:42:06 +0000http://thesacredordinary.com/?p=493Continue reading →]]>There’s nothing a church musician hates more than one more “Merry Christmas!” We’re not Scrooges, but think of the poor tax accountant on 4-15. Imagine April 15 as a much-loved time of gift giving and feasting. The tax accountant is chained to her desk, which is heaped with papers – clients are lining the hallway waiting their turn. No “Happy Tax Day!” for her.

A typical Christmas Eve where I work:

11am Children’s Pageant

4pm Children’s Pageant

6pm Christmas Service

8pm Christmas Service

10:30 pm Christmas Service

And y’all come back now for noon on Christmas Day!

Merry Christmas To You Too, Buddy!

My guard is up against that bastard Pere Noel. I’ve actually had a bruised buttocks from sitting on the organ bench so long.

Often I use songs children know to make a fun puzzle of bass and treble, whole and half, space and line. Even in April I’m not above pulling out a carol collection for a reluctant reader. What seven-year-old can resist Jingle Bells? My student, Jasmine, said she did not know The First Noel. I sit down to play it for her. It’s April. My guard is down.

We used to be adventurous travelers, walking – or at least driving – perimeters of islands to see it all.

These days we enjoy a more relaxing winter vacation. Even though we’re young, my husband and I are not above staying in “old folks hotels” where clientele play cribbage in the afternoon and evening bands cover Frank Sinatra.

Sunset comes early in the Caribbean. After watching the orange ball sizzle into the sea, we make early suppers in our room – salad and yam with butter one night. Rotisserie chicken and green beans another night. Last night from our balcony we heard an unusual set of songs from the restaurant band. Billy Joel, Kat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel.

What are these people thinking? Music from the 70’s? This is an old folk’s hotel!

]]>https://thesacredordinary.com/2016/02/09/barbados-2016/feed/1dianeheathlady with a noodle 2Thanksgiving – Outside the Boxhttps://thesacredordinary.com/2015/11/26/thanksgiving-outside-the-box/
https://thesacredordinary.com/2015/11/26/thanksgiving-outside-the-box/#commentsThu, 26 Nov 2015 15:39:44 +0000http://thesacredordinary.com/?p=422Continue reading →]]>We are a strange Thanksgiving trio – Diane, Mel and David. On this day of grannies, cousins, sisters, uncles and orphans, it’s just the three of us.

The only thing traditional about our holiday is that Someone has purchased an 18 pound turkey (“it was the only fresh one left”) and has enough stuffing for 20 people. (and Someone Else eats low carb)

Enter friend Jeanne and her invitation to join them for dessert at 6:30.

There is every reason we want to accept.

Except …. and I know this is strange….

I just hate eating a big meal while the sun is still up.

Options:

Eat dinner while the sun is up.

Eat a small meal while the sun is up.

Eat dinner after dessert.

Don’t go to Jeanne’s.

If you’ve had Jeanne’s desserts you do NOT want to pick number four. (Low carb, Who?)

“China sees the game as mostly over, with a few odds and ends remaining that it can weather with little discomfort……

As the Dalai Lama ages, Beijing also thinks it has time on its side. It is almost certainly planning to engineer the Dalai Lama’s succession, to raise a young leader more favorably inclined toward its rule, and promote him over any rival chosen by the exile community.

But the Dalai Lama irritated China recently by suggesting that he might not reincarnate.

Officials from the avowedly atheist Communist Party responded by accusing the Dalai Lama of betraying his religion, and insisting that the party itself, not the Dalai Lama, would decide whether he would be reborn.”

I love Natalie. (even when I hate her – some of you know what I’m talking about) Writing Down the Bones was the first (the only?) book about writing that made me slam it shut and grab a pen.

Natalie’s paintings do the same thing.

Childlike, out of proportion, skewed angles, and full of juicy life energy – her art work makes me grab a paint brush!

Natalie’s writing about art reminds me that beauty is in front of my face.

Right now. Every day.

]]>https://thesacredordinary.com/2014/10/17/falling-in-love-with-natalie-again/feed/2dianeheathgoldberg Santa-Fe-Sink-2013goldberg happybirthdaygoldberg fathersshirtWhat Does George W. Bush Have In Common With The Sacred Ordinary?https://thesacredordinary.com/2014/10/03/what-does-george-w-bush-have-in-common-with-the-sacred-ordinary/
https://thesacredordinary.com/2014/10/03/what-does-george-w-bush-have-in-common-with-the-sacred-ordinary/#commentsFri, 03 Oct 2014 14:43:25 +0000http://thesacredordinary.com/?p=395Continue reading →]]>I am chagrined to learn that after leaving office, George W. Bush has taken up art. His life-passion is painting.

Apparently he has painted over 50 dogs.

He also paints himself in the shower.

And in the bathtub.

He piddles way his free time. JUST LIKE I DO. But he paints better than I do. He hired a tutor, so that must explain it.

Suddenly I feel compassion for George. He never should have gone into politics. Obviously never should have been president.